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Death in the Fifth Position, by Edgar Box (aka Gore Vidal)

I didn’t know until I read some of the obituaries of Gore Vidal that he had ever written crime stories. It seems that the publication in 1948 of his third novel, The City and the Pillar, caused a scandal because of its frank depiction of homosexuality, so he decided to write crime stories for a time under a pseudonym. Thus Edgar Box was born. There are three Edgar Box stories, published in 1952,’53 and ’54, and apparently they did very well. So just out of curiosity, I read the first one.

The structure of the plot is conventional. Peter Cutler Sargeant is a brash young New York public relations man who is employed by a ballet company to deal with any bad publicity arising from the fact that the United Veterans Committee is accusing the resident choreographer of being a Communist. They are picketing the theatre. But any adverse publicity generated by this is quickly overwhelmed by the murder on stage of one of the leading dancers. Peter quickly establishes another interest by starting an affair with one of the corps de ballet, none other than the understudy of the dead ballerina. But there are a number of possible suspects with a motive for murder. As the bodies pile up, Peter tries to work out who dunnit. It’s not too hard for aficionados of the genre to pick who did.

The characterisation is conventional too; it’s pretty easy to stereotype members of a ballet company. There is the wily impresario, the aging Russian prima ballerina, the gay leading man and the tortured conductor. Peter, the narrator, is the most interesting of the characters; his asides, strangely enough, sound just like a young Gore Vidal. Early in the story, he finds himself feeling sorry for the person he suspects of murder, ‘which shows something or other about mid-twentieth-century morality: I mean we seem to be less and less aroused by such things as private murders in an age when public murder is so much admired.’ Vidal plays Sargeant for laughs: ‘I thought of those eighteen century prints of Rowlandson and Gilray and Hogarth, all the drunken mothers and ghastly children wallowing in gin in the alleys … it makes you stop and think. I thought longingly for several seconds of a gin and tonic.’ He regrets he has so little time alone ‘to figure just where I stood on any number of assorted topics like television, Joyce, deism, marionettes, buggery and Handel’s Messiah.’ Vidal clearly had a lot of fun writing this story. But he was possibly being serious when he wrote of the police: ‘There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of a group of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.’ Vidal was always a liberal on issues of state coercion.

It may be that what seems now a rather slight work carried a bit more weight at the time of writing because of its cheeky irreverence on subjects dear to the hearts of many Americans then, including Communism and homosexuality (‘Anyway, it may all be a matter of diet’). Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American activities was still riding high and people in America’s artistic community were regularly attacked as Communists. Homosexuality was still a crime. Vidal ultimately plays it safe on both these issues in this story, but it probably seemed quite daring at the time. I get the impression that Vidal – that self- described ‘gentleman bitch’ – is treating the whole thing as a joke, but he may have had a more serious purpose as well.

Two trivial points. One is that the journalist that Sargeant outsmarts is called Elmer Bush. I wonder if Vidal remembered his early creation when he called George W. Bush ‘the stupidest man in the United States’. The other concerns the ballet; the company seems able to perform Swan Lake, Sheherazade and an (imaginary) modern ballet all in one program. It must have been a long night.

Gore Vidal was one of the best contemporary commentators on American society and politics, and his incisive views and wit will be sadly missed. You can read some of his more controversial comments here. And you can read one of his many obituaries here.